Views from Maryland...Home for now, but sometimes out and about, trying to see more of the world whenever possible. The world is my home. And family and friends my world.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Hugs, laps, cooking, love and moms. My treasures.

Today is Mother's Day, 2009, and after 2 weeks of rain and cloudy skies and weather, this day was beautiful! Spring has sprung- leaves are on the trees, flowers are blooming. Our son Evan is home from being in South Korea for a year, not without it's tribulations (healthwise) but looking good and fully recovered. We had a nice party here for him and his girlfriend this weekend, a belated Cinco de Mayo celebration. Friends and family attended, which was a real treat for all of us here. Below are photos of my mom, my mother in law, her mother, and my grandmother, and some of the love they shared with our children, through cooking, hugs, laps, stories, and just being there for all of us.

In 2003, I got an email from my sister in law Annie, sharing some sentiments about Mothers and mothering, written by Anna Quindlen, a Pulitzer prize writer and novelist, who also writes for Newsweek, the magazine.

"If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing theyever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and theblack-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with theyellow ringletsand the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with thelower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but indisbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, twotaller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do andhave learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion ofthem, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry,who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doorsclosed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move foodfrom plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for thebathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep withineach, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now.Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry andsleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete.Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they arebattered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dustwould rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on theplayground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me wasthat they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children ispresented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice,until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No oneknows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, anothercan be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilettrained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told toput baby to bed onhis bellyso that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By thetime my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of researchon sudden infant death syndromeTo a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and thensoothing.Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the researchwill follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderfulbooks on child development, in which he describes three different sorts ofinfants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil foran 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fatlittle legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was hedevelopmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Lastyear he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He canwalk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakeswere made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall ofFame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, nottheirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late forpreschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on hergeography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insistedI include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker andthen drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted Iinclude that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first twoseasons...What was I thinking?But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make whiledoing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear nowthat the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture ofthe three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swingset on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate,and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when theyslept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the nextthing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a littlemore and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me andwhat was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought somedaythey would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect theysimply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that Iback off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-factand I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound upwith the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyoneto excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I wasbound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were." by Anna Quindlan.

One more thing...there isn't a day that goes by when I don't miss my mom, Peggy, who passed away in October 2002, after an extended illness. She was taken from this earth far too soon. I miss her and will always love her. One thing that I am happy about is that during my time (about 9 months) away from my own home in MD, taking care of my mom in home hospice in PA, I was telling my mom how loving my daughter is..that she always says "I love you" before we say goodbye on the phone. Although I ALWAYS knew that my mom loved me, and she knew likewise, those were words we rarely spoke. Then I said "I love you" to her, and it was a bit of an awkward moment for the both of us, but after that we said it to each other often. Thank you Mara for opening that door for us.I am also grateful that I have a mother in law whom I deeply love....she's always been so kind and good and loving as a mother to me.

To my children, I hope I have always given enough of my time and support to you.

As a tribute to my mom, I would like to share this link to a person of wisdom who I think expresses the sentiments of my own mother.Red and White Roses Please click the roses link.